Chicago’s rocky road in the art fair business isn’t such a distant memory. But if the second iteration of EXPO CHICAGO – running September 19-22 – proves as appealing as its debut last year, that history may be finally relegated to the category of old news. As exhibitors put the finishing touches to their booths on Navy Pier, the show’s President and Director, Tony Karman, offers a few thoughts on his state of the art.

Thomas Connors: How do you go about positioning the fair worldwide to attract top exhibitors?

Tony Karman: First and foremost was forming a selection committee of extraordinary international dealers. Rhona Hoffman, Anthony Meier, Michael Kohn, and Chris D’Amelio of David Zwirner really set the tone, eliciting and encouraging peers at their level to participate. Ultimately, this is a peer review process. Without that structure, without that stamp of quality, there’s really no reason to be doing this. That’s really the flower that attracts the bees. You have to have a great exhibitor list...

EDITION Chicago is a new art fair put together by Andrew Rafacz, principal of the gallery that bears his name, and Carolina Jayaram, Executive Director of Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC). It’s the inaugural year of the fair, but Rafacz and Jayaram both bring over a decade of experience to the table: Rafacz as a gallerist and art fair participant himself, and Jayaram as an arts administrator who, while living in Miami before coming to Chicago, was heavily involved with connecting the professional community there to Art Basel.

Jayaram is quick to point out that “Miami won’t happen here,” in the sense that a web of interconnected fairs like that which occurs during Basel couldn’t be sustained in Chicago. She does say, however, that part of the impetus behind EDITION came from asking, “what we could do as a community around EXPO both to support what Tony (Karman) is doing but also to give artists and dealers in this community who can’t be inside of EXPO an opportunity to take advantage of that time and that weekend”...